so, we're sending the message that democrats had better not vote for this. >> what the president is doing is shifting the inflation adjustments from federal praments programs from broad measurable of consumer price index to a more narrow one called the chained cpi. >> this is a camouflage operation designed to easily -- they think it's going to be easy to cut government expenditures across the board and they hope people won't notice. >> supporters say the chained cpi is based on simple premise that people buy different things depending on the price. >> when the cost of one good goes up by a lot. we shift into another good. if apple becomes more expensive, we will buy a couple more bananas, so the chained cpi is more accurate measure of inflation. >> the change would only reduce the future increase in benefits by only 2.5% a year. over 10 years it would lower the deficit by $339 billion. that's because the change in the cpi wouldn't just be for social security but rather all federal programs adjusted for inflation